Choosing to be grateful

For some reason, I woke up on a gratitude jag this morning. Sitting with my coffee, I started thinking about all the things I don’t have to do because other people do them. I don’t have to weave cloth to make my clothes. I don’t have to knit socks, fabricate shoes, grow my own food, or transport it from across the world. I’m thankful for the people and companies that make fabric, build shoes, grow food, move it, and run the stores that let me gather everything I need in one place.

I’m especially grateful that some companies still choose to make the better product. One of my biggest frustrations is how often the inferior option wins. Faced with a $7 air vent and a $14 one, most people buy the cheaper version. Eventually, the better one disappears—not because it isn’t better, but because it doesn’t sell enough. Even when the margins are slightly better, demand wins. So to the manufacturers who keep making higher-quality products anyway: thank you.

We’re a huge country, yet we still have multiple manufacturers designing and building furnaces and air conditioners—giving consumers real choices and meeting massive demand year after year, even amid regulation and complexity. Thank you to the engineers who choose to design equipment well. Thank you to the factory workers who do the same task again and again and still hit the mark, achieving failure rates measured in hundredths of a percent.

Thank you to the men and women who extract raw materials that become gasoline, steel, and copper. Thank you to the companies that make paper cups, plastic lids, aluminum cans, and food containers—and to those who supply the raw materials behind them. These quiet systems keep food safe, drinks portable, and daily life convenient. Who ever stops to thank them? We should. So, thank you.

And thank you to everyone who goes to work each day doing their small part to keep this vast cooperation running—so I can do a few things myself and buy the rest. I don’t have to cut down trees to heat my house. Electricity shows up when I flip a switch. Even though we often complain, thank you to the government workers who manage the rules that allow imports, exports, and a global market to exist.

This list could go on forever. Somewhere in Ghana, someone is harvesting cocoa pods so they can become chocolate for Valentine’s Day. Thank you. I really enjoy chocolate.

And today, I choose to be grateful.